Feminist gaming critic and blogger Anita Sarkeesian chose to cancel a Wednesday speech at Utah State University after an anonymous email purportedly sent by a student promised to violently attack her and her audience if she went forth with the event.

The fact that the United Arab Emirates’ Mariam Al Mansouri is leading airstrikes against Islamic State has some social media users in a sexist uproar, but none compare with the illustrious “Five” on Fox News whose hosts are perfect evidence that misogyny isn’t unique to the Middle East.

Much to the “Daily Show” host’s dismay, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand recently revealed she’d been on the receiving end of several misogynistic comments from her colleagues in the legislative branch of the U.S. government.

In a “Last Week Tonight” clip that was posted online Monday during the show’s hiatus, John Oliver delivers two of the most memorable metaphors for the wage gap to date, followed by a faux commercial for the currency every sexist boss has dreamed of.

Jon Stewart, accompanied by correspondents Jessica Williams and Jordan Klepper, explains how American universities are practically “incentiviz[ing] sexual assault” these days with inaction and leniency toward attackers.

There was a time, around a decade ago, when American Apparel’s brand seemed to be enhanced, at least on the business side, by the pervy sensibility of its founder and charismatic leader, Dov Charney. Those days have apparently passed.

In the wake of sexual assaults in the Global South, American conservatives and liberals alike naively ask the question of what is it about the “cultures” of countries such as Pakistan, India and Afghanistan that generates such misogyny.

In the aftermath of the horrific Isla Vista slayings, which some have speculated were fueled by misogynist extremism, women in the Twitterverse have decided it’s about time they talk about male privilege.

When violent eruptions like the killings in Santa Barbara on May 23 happen, discussions in the news often—as they have in this case—focus on individual culpability as well as the assumed (and often substantiated) mental illness of the perpetrator.

The companies that control the media stand to benefit the most from the Supreme Court’s latest disastrous decision; a new theory about germs poses the most important challenge to medicine in the 21st century; meanwhile, Microsoft’s new CEO has revolutionized the company. These discoveries and more after the jump.

Mika Brzezinski calls out her colleague and MSNBC panel for “capitalizing on a non-story for ratings because people’s imaginations are pricked by this and that is not responsible.” This leads them to talk down, belittle and show a complete disregard for who she is and what she says.

A group of young Muslim women tries to destigmatize head coverings; The Economist is under attack for a cartoon some see as anti-Semitic; meanwhile, a Time magazine cover portrayal of Hillary Clinton has sparked a wave of online outrage. These discoveries and more after the jump.

A glance at U.S. media coverage of Nelson Mandela’s memorial service will tell you only two important things happened: President Obama shook hands with Cuba’s Raul Castro and also took a selfie with the prime ministers of Denmark and the U.K. Neither of these nonevents should have received the attention they did, but the fact that they did tells us a lot about our media’s priorities.

Sexist behavior is nothing new in Mexico, but perhaps what some don’t realize is the effect it’s had on female health as men refuse to use condoms, and women, fully dependent on their partners, are left without a choice. In the state of Chiapas, the most common way to contract HIV is from a lifelong partner or husband.

In the modern-day discussion about misogyny, women are often accused of “reverse sexism.” This is usually because they apply their arguments about gender bias to “all men” and it hurts some people’s feelings. What if that’s the point?

Transgender people face discrimination every time they go to restrooms marked men or women; as the NSA destroys our sense of privacy, perhaps rather than looking to Orwell’s “1984,” we should brush up on our Kafka; meanwhile, journalist Phyllis Richman responds decades later to a misogynistic letter from a Harvard professor regarding married women pursuing graduate studies. These discoveries and more after the jump.

A look at the day’s political happenings, including a person of interest is identified in the ricin letters investigation and a liberal activist reveals why he secretly recorded Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

A look at the day’s political happenings, including why prominent news outlets are declining an invitation to meet with Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama’s becoming the target of yet another letter possibly laced with the deadly poison ricin.

Rush Limbaugh has a major problem when it comes to women. In the past, the conservative talk radio host has accused them of being sluts for using birth control and called those who support feminism “feminazis.” Now, the caustic commentator has come up with a new calumny: “When women got the right to vote is when it all went downhill.”

In what looks to be an attempt to keep females out of Cairo’s political life, hundreds of men assaulted about 50 Egyptian women and their male supporters as they marched against sexual harassment in Tahrir Square on Friday.

Next time Rush Limbaugh wants to play the bully, he might need to play something other than Peter Gabriel’s music for a soundtrack. The musician’s reps posted a statement on Gabriel’s Facebook page noting that he was “appalled” to hear that Limbaugh had spun the tune “Sledgehammer” while besmirching Sandra Fluke’s honor last week.

Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner is flipping the script on the contraception debate that’s become the top issue for culture war enthusiasts by proposing a bill that would oblige men to go through similar kinds of preliminary steps to get Viagra prescriptions or vasectomies as women will for their reproductive health needs if another bit of legislation becomes law.

What if the right gave a culture war and nobody came? Unfortunately, that’s not the case with the latest cultural kerfuffle, manufactured and amplified by GOP gadfly Rush Limbaugh, about contraception generally and the testimony of Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke before Congress more specifically.

Entirely missing from Foster Friess’ old-timey zinger about how the ladies did the contraception back when he was a lad, other than class, was any sense of male accountability in the procreation process.

Charting the demise of racism by the rising number of interracial marriages is probably not the most reliable indicator that it’s ending. Wouldn’t the elimination of disparities in income, employment, health care, education, crime, punishment and family structure be more accurate indicators?

Here’s a thought exercise: In a nation where 33 percent of the Supreme Court justices are women, 17 percent of the seats in the Senate and House are held by women and 12 percent of the statehouses have female governors, what accounts for the fact that only 5 percent of movie directors in 2011 are female?

Surprisingly, Herman Cain has one thing right. If nothing else, his campaign has shown that race is as much a way of thinking as it is anything else. Because that’s the case, he is taking advantage of the fact that some audiences think about race differently from others.

To set the stage for the latest media-made kerfuffle of Campaign 2012, what happened was that GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann paid a visit Tuesday to “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” for which she was no doubt prepped to come off all hip and stuff, but her performance was undermined ... (more)

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Juan Cole reports from New York on Occupy Wall Street and Palestinians at the U.N. Also: The politics of immigration; women make less than men (still), and a jury convicts the Irvine 11.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Juan Cole reports from New York on Occupy Wall Street and Palestinians at the U.N. Also: The politics of immigration; women still earn less than men, and a jury convicts the Irvine 11. Pictured above, Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s ambassador to the U.N.